


High Ho, the Hanged Man

by StarvingForAttention



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26026507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarvingForAttention/pseuds/StarvingForAttention
Summary: Wilson catches himself in his own trap, and is left to wait either for help or for the rope to break.It takes about five hundred years, give or take.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	High Ho, the Hanged Man

**Author's Note:**

> Wilson's slang at one point is about ten years ahead of its time. I'm prepared to get lynched for it, but you gotta catch me first.

In hindsight, Wilson thought as he swayed feebly from side to side, growing dizzier by the swing, the trap design he had been using since first waking up in the Constant was, in fact, perfectly adequate.

It had been his drive for invention which had possessed him to try and improve on the trusty woven baskets. There simply hadn't been enough things left to discover in recent times, not since he and his fellow inmates had first perfected their walled camp and filled it with all the scant luxuries they had. The double dragons of hunger and insanity were manageable; risk to life and limb, while still a constant threat, was no longer quite so pressing with improved equipment and team tactics.

Indeed, they (well, not that he meant to brag, but mostly Wilson himself) had come up with nearly everything one required to live a decent life in the Constant, and didn't especially want for anything except freedom and ways to kill time.

And for efficiency, of course. Anything that could speed up the daily chores was in Wilson's books more golden than the head of his pickaxe. And so, an idea was formed. An improved snare that could work equally well as a trap and a makeshift drying rack. Genius! Only, the loop that was supposed to tighten around the unassuming animal's foot hadn't done so quickly enough. Wilson had experimented with various different knots till he found an exceptionally speedy setup. Which had called for an impromptu victory dance. Which had caused him to slip on the mulch coating the forest floor. Which had caused him to stumble straight into the readied snare.

And so...

In the end, it hardly mattered how it had happened. The important part was that he was now hanging upside down from a tree, his fingertips two feet from the ground, with both the tree trunk and all of his tools well beyond reach.

And with twilight slowly creeping in.

"Woodie? Winona? Wigfrid?" After a long pause, he tried again. "Maxwell?"

No response. And why would there be? Wilson had said he'd explore the southern peninsula for two nights, before a sudden strange fancy had made him change his trajectory eastwards. In other words, no-one would come looking for him tonight, and even if they did, what were the odds they would find him before nightfall?

In a last-ditch effort, he contorted himself into pretzels trying to reach his ankles long enough to undo the noose. Surely he could manage it. 

After a quarter of an hour and untold attempts, during which he managed only once to even touch the rope, he fell limp, feeling like week-old hung meat.

That was it, then. Unless he was saved by a passing friend, an usually kind wandering pigman, or a freak bolt of lightning, he'd die dangling from the tree. Which was obnoxious, admittedly, and not an experience he enjoyed repeating, but at least his demise would free his mind from his trapped body.

Never mind how his mind could be separate from his body. Such unscientific questions were best scrutinised when he could actually jot down some notes.

He tried to enjoy the upside-down view of the horizon as he waited for Charlie to come claim him.

It didn't take long for twilight to descend upon him. By then, he was already deadly dizzy. Too much blood packing into his brow, no matter how roomy it was. 

As he sank into the shadows and heard the familiar roar, he closed his eyes and tried to relax.

And then opened his eyes again as the minutes ticked by and he still didn't find himself pummelled to death.

Instead, he found himself bathed in a cold glow, at once eerie and familiar. Twisting around, he discovered that the tree he was hanging from radiated a moon-like light, much akin to the mushrooms underground, but even brighter.

He groaned. Trust him to tether himself to the only tree in the entire Constant that produced bioluminescence.

He could have sworn he heard the darkness chortle.

* * *

The tree continued to glow even after sunrise. Its light merely paled, till at its dimmest it was only noticeable if one paid close attention to it.

Wilson swayed gently from his noose, doing all he could to distract himself from his growling stomach, from his limbs that now felt like replicas fashioned from unblown balloons, and from a headache which couldn't have been much worse if someone had used his temples as twin anvils.

And since there wasn't anything much to _do_ , he theorized.

The trunk hadn't glowed the day before. Neither had the leaves. He would have noticed something so obvious, would he have not? He was the master of avoiding dormant tentacles and wasp nests obscured by tall grass. Surely something so remarkable as a natural light source wouldn't have escaped his notice. There had to be something else at play.

His stomach chose that moment to remind him that the last morsels of food he'd devoured the day before were long gone.

Starvation, then. He'd live... well, that was to say he'd die, of course. But knowing that one would be resurrected after it was over, it could be endured. Patience was the key. Patience, and perhaps biting through his swollen tongue once the hunger pangs grew impossible to bear.

Only not really. Suicide was one of the few causes of death he was yet to experience. Maxwell had once claimed it did wonders to one's self-esteem, but as the statement came from the former devil, Wilson took it with an entire mountain of salt. 

As the day's temperature kept rising, he wondered if he might not die of exposure first.

* * *

Wilson woke up with the tree's light blaring into his face, feeling like a punching bag slashed open with knives. 

He felt less hungry, somehow. His murderously bad breath was likewise gone, replaced by a honey-like sweetness. It was all a pleasant remnant of his dreams about roasted turkey legs and freshly made ratatouille, no doubt. Any moment now it would pass and his stomach would once again try to consume itself in despair.

Only, it didn't. Sure, it rumbled and growled and was very noticeably, decisively, empty, but the tell-tale weakness that followed in the wake of extended hunger did not return.

And he was sticky. Of course, he had been sticky since the day before, for reasons he tried not to think about, but which the stench of sweat and less savoury bodily fluids constantly reminded him about. This was something different, both in consistency and in odor. It felt like he was being encased in sap, like those pre-historic bugs one found trapped within pieces of amber.

He looked up and saw his fears were at least partially correct. The tree was secreting a transparent, goopy liquid that gathered at his feet and slowly made its molasses-like descent downwards. Once he was aware of it, he felt it everywhere: creeping down his back underneath his shirt, covering his arms and chest, slowly dripping down from his hair to form a sticky puddle underneath him.

And of course, it was both inside and outside of his mouth.

The realization was like a thunderbolt. It made him tremble.

It was a tremendous ordeal to actually consume anything while upside down, but it appeared he had somehow done just that with this thick syrupy sap, quite unwittingly. And he couldn't stop it, either: even if he wired his mouth shut, it would once again fall gormlessly open the moment he lost consciousness.

He considered the taste, so sweet and rich he could already feel tooth rot setting in. Packed with energy, no doubt, and liquid enough to keep dehydration from setting in. It might, just might, be enough to sustain him.

His screams echoed far across the plains.

* * *

One day, one of Wilson's allies would have to come by him. Surely. Their world was vast, but not so rich in resources they could keep blithely ignoring large swatches of it. One day, they would run out of stone, or gold, or beefalo dung, and so they would go exploring. And then...

The full moon came. The full moon went. The new moon did likewise.

Nobody came.

* * *

"This is absurd, of course," said Wilson. Well, less 'said' and more 'mumbled into his overgrown beard', but Chuck would understand him equally well even if he instead chose to relay his message by contorting his body to simulate Morse code. "There is no scientific basis for a human body to be able to endure what mine has been through so far."

Chuck the tree gave its usual response, which was to say it creaked in the wind.

Wilson sighed. "Fine. Be that way." He was already longing for Charlie's return. She didn't exactly reply, either, but sometimes Wilson heard a change in the hum of the darkness when he said something particularly enlightening. Even an ex-human intellect was still an intellect.

He sulked for some moments before he decided he couldn't accept Chuck's silence. "The odds suggest I should have been either rescued or transformed into a ghost months ago. With luck like this, perhaps I should take up gambling. Do you think I could teach blackjack to the pig king?"

Chuck seemed sympathetic to the idea.

"Graverobbing might be an easier source for gold." Wilson paused. "I never really dug that, however."

And so, day one hundred and forty-eight of his upside-down experiment slowly crawled to its end.

* * *

He had thought he knew what limbo was like. He had thought he knew everything there was to know about coping with futility. He had thought that, after being thirty-three for thirteen years, there was only so much he could still learn about surviving with no end or purpose in sight.

He was rather miffed to discover just how wrong he had been.

* * *

"Charlie?" 

It was no use: he couldn't even hear himself, with his voice so faint and thick from his sappy diet. The same sap had mostly preserved his clothes, but they still reeked of rot. And his hair was inexplicable. 

All the same, he persisted. "Charlie? Please kill me."

The queen of the board. His only hope.

His only hope who appeared to be busy elsewhere.

After several more silent pleas, another voice responded to him instead, echoing from the recesses of his mind. 

_"You have no idea how I longed for the option, pal. It's a luxury to even have the choice."_

He positioned his tongue between his teeth and bit down.

The full strength of his jaw could barely graze the muscle.

He resumed dangling, too stunned to even cry. Which was for the best, since his tears had dried out months ago.

* * *

Eternity, then. Eternity with nothing to do but watch the seasons slowly revolve around him. Frost couldn't kill him. Heat couldn't kill him. The inch-thick layer of sap coating him from toe to top shielded him from all. It was a priceless discovery. Assuming he could ever tell someone about it.

After nineteen full moons, they came. Crawling all over the trunk, carpeting the ground with their undulating movements, raising their eyeless eye towards Wilson as though finding him curious. Shadows followed, beasts with long appendages and a dozen mouths with flint-sharp teeth, circling him menacingly without ever quite touching him.

A twentieth full moon came. And a twenty-first. And a twenty-fifth and a thirtieth and a fortieth and a—

And suddenly, everything in the universe made perfect sense.

* * *

It rained water. He got wet. It rained snow and sleet. He got wet and cold. It rained frogs. He got bemused by the sight of the creatures forming battalions and marching into the wilderness as one amphibian.

Eventually, all rain ceased to fall. There were no seasons, no wind, no birds nor sounds of life. Only dusk and dawn reminded Wilson of the passage of time.

The forest behind him began to petrify. Its once noble greenery turned still and grey until his surroundings resembled a highly modern art piece. Wilson was certain the trees had chosen to become rocks to show their sympathy towards his plight. After all, he had been petrified the longest.

Chuck flourished. 

His companions came and went, walking by without so much as casting a glimpse towards him. Woodie glanced at the tree once, no doubt attracted by the notion of chopping down something as mighty as Chuck. In the end, he too kept moving. 

They looked healthy. That was all that mattered.

Wilson could no longer speak, so he tried whistling instead, spurring them on their journey.

Soon after they were gone, the trees began to metamorphose into coniferous gemstones.

* * *

Time had long since compressed into a singularity. Well, probably long since. It was difficult to tell with a singularity.

During his more lucid moments, Wilson screamed, aware all the while that he wasn't making a single sound. The rest of the time he drifted, comforted by the haze of insanity that with each passing full moon felt more like sanity.

All moons were full moons these day.

Why was he still alive? He had ceased to be human, was merely an appendage of the tree, but he couldn't deny he had been made with the same blueprints, with the same bones and blood and senses as those free, scurrying creatures. At the end of the day, he was meant to be mortal.

After what felt like five hundred lifetimes, he flung himself off to the sea at the edges of his mind, never to return.

* * *

And then, on a dew-drenched morning like any other, the last strands of the rope around Wilson's ankle unravelled from the strain.

He plummeted face-first onto hard ground and lay still, feeling kinship to flattened frogs.

"Ow."

It took him several minutes to realise he had spoken out loud. It took him much longer to move. 

After what felt like a whole other eternity, he began crawling in the direction of the camp. After a second eternity, his legs slowly got used to the idea of movement and allowed him to get up and first lurch, then hobble onwards.

Not once did he look back.

Finally, after a third eternity, he made it back to camp, where he was informed by his companions that he had only been gone for a single night, and who, when he tried to articulate his ordeal and failed in almost every respect, asked him whether he had eaten some really bad mushrooms the day before. 


End file.
